


Red Threads

by Singing_Siren



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, He sees dead people, Jane is actually psychic, Psychic Abilities, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, mentioned Red John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:40:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23674777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Singing_Siren/pseuds/Singing_Siren
Summary: Patrick Jane is not a psychic. Not in the true sense of the word. He cannot tell the future or read minds, but that doesn’t mean that he is normal. Jane was never normal.As a kid, with his dad in the circus, he people-watches. They give away their intentions through reflex and facial tics; it's too easy. He grows to be older and wiser, and he learns that there is something behind those actions, behind the people themselves.He remembers the day it all became clear to him. Just one day is all it takes.
Relationships: Kimball Cho & Patrick Jane, Patrick Jane & Grace Van Pelt, Patrick Jane & Teresa Lisbon, Patrick Jane & Wayne Rigsby
Comments: 6
Kudos: 84





	Red Threads

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really into this show, y'all. I don't expect a lot of you to read it, but I hope you enjoy anyways. Spoilers up to 2x08.

Patrick Jane is not a psychic. Not in the true sense of the word. He cannot tell the future or read minds, but that doesn’t mean that he is normal. Jane was never normal.

As a kid, with his dad in the circus, he people-watches. They give away their intentions through reflex and facial tics; it's too easy. He grows to be older and wiser, and he learns that there is something behind those actions, behind the people themselves.

He remembers the day it all became clear to him. Just one day is all it takes.

He has been doing the psychic act for years. This is the first year filmed on live television, and he is excited. With a few calming words from Angela, he takes the stage, mind ready and kicked into high gear.

Then,  _ boom _ .

Noise everywhere.

It’s like his brain wakes up, and in one moment, just one, his eyes are open.

To his left, screaming. His right, crying. But across from him, standing in the crowded seats behind a balding old man, is a beaten and bloodied woman. She wails, her eyes locked with Jane’s. Her hands pull at her hair; it comes away in clumps, blood hitting the floor in waves.

A hand on his shoulder.

“Patrick,” his producer says, voice low, “we’re about to start. You ready?”

He looks around, from the crowd to the strangers with red staining their skin, and nods. His life finally feels right.

“I’m ready.”

\----

After the interview, he finds his wife and daughter dead. But it’s more than that. He sees their bodies, bloody on the floor, and he can’t find their spirits.

He throws himself into work. Agent Lisbon takes him under her wing, and he gains her trust with his insightful observations and charming remarks. She has a crowd behind her, a long line of dead that follow her. They’re not all criminals, the people that Lisbon took the lives of. Some are family, friends, begging and pleading for permission to move on from their world. Their pleas land on Lisbon’s deaf ears. Jane hears through, and he listens.

Each day with Lisbon and her team, their own lines getting longer and longer every day, he helps one of them. Her family goes first. A year with the CBI, and her line has changed. Gone are the pleading souls, replaced by screaming murderers and pedophiles who lost their lives at Lisbon’s hand.

He hears their secrets, things he’ll never repeat.

In their cases, this helps. Sometimes, he’ll meet a suspect and just  _ know _ they’re the one. Maybe it’s the soul following them around or the whispers coming from something just out of Jane’s reach.

\----

He gives gifts to his team. The dearly departed tell him about his friends, and he gives them what they need to heal. He plans his gifts, calming ones after a bad case, expensive when his team is feeling especially down, extravagant ones when they’re happy.

On one occasion, a pony for Lisbon. Food for Rigsby. Small trinkets for Van Pelt. Silence and a good book for Cho.

Their gratitude helps with the background noise, but he doesn’t do it for that. He does it to see their faces light up as they look around with wide eyes, trying to find who left the item. He does it to grant the dead one last favor before they leave their family or friend.

\----

After Red John gets his claws into Rebecca, after she shoots Bosco and his team, Jane realises something. Something he’s been missing since his eyes had opened.

Those who do not feel guilty about their victims lack a trail of souls.

His plan, the one created in the many nights he sat below the red face on his wall, fades away. He will not know Red John when he sees him by the line behind him. Red John feels no guilt in the same way Rebecca doesn’t. Belief can do crazy things to someone.

\----

The dead do not only follow their killers, the ones who did the deed. They stay with their loved ones as well. The ones who die of natural causes hang onto their children, their parents, until the issues they’ve left behind are resolved.

He knows now that his wife and child are gone. If they’re not with Red John and not with Jane, then there is no place else for them to go.

He takes solace in that fact. They’re gone. They are not trapped in his world anymore to watch Jane suffer.

\----

Van Pelt catches him sometimes, staring off behind her, murmuring words to the dead. He tells them their job is done. They can go. Grace will be okay without them. To the killers and the sick that hang on with blood dripping from their wounds and their hands forever bound behind their backs, red thread connecting them to Van Pelt, Jane yells inside his mind. He banishes them from Van Pelt’s line with solutions to their troubles and prayers to their loved ones on the other side. He curses them until they cut the thread themselves.

“Jane,” she says, always, “you okay?”

He smiles brilliantly, eyes carefully avoiding the snarling masses behind her shoulder, and replies, “Never been better.”

Rigsby passes this off as Jane being strange, but Van Pelt will always have her suspicions. She smiles his way and  _ knows _ . As the weight from her shoulders lifts, slowly, so slowly, she knows she has Patrick Jane to thank.

Jane has a feeling that Cho has always known. He meets Jane’s eyes as he mutters to the dead, and he blinks, expression not changing, but the dead behind him squirm. Cho knows that Jane is special, but he never mentions it. He just blinks and shifts his gaze back to whatever he needs to study, be it a suspect or paperwork.

Lisbon is harder to crack. Her line is longer than anyone else’s, more vicious than Cho’s and more emotional than Van Pelt’s. She has the most guilt, the longest line. The more Jane chips away at it, the longer it gets, the stronger Lisbon’s guilt grows. The bags under her eyes aggravate Jane until he’s screaming at the dead to leave her to her life, to leave their problems in this world and move onto the next.

His shields crack in his anger. He forgets who knows what and ends up spitting-mad in the office, on his couch.

“You do not belong in this plane,” he clenches his eyes shut until all he sees are those red threads. “Leave now, and you will be spared. Whatever God you worship will leave you to rot alone. The people here are not worth the pain you are bringing to them. Cut your thread, and I will leave you to your eternity on the other side.”

A hand on his crossed arms. Lisbon. He can tell by the red lines highlighted in the darkness of his closed eyes.

“Jane, what’s wrong?” Her voice is worried, and he knows her brow is tight. “You were muttering to yourself. It looked like a nightmare.”

He takes a moment to compose himself, then opens his eyes and puts on his best smile, the one that makes Cho raise his eyebrows. He sits, one hand grabbing Lisbon’s and squeezing.

“I’m wonderful. Don’t even remember the dream. How’s the case going? Have you found the killer yet, or are you still ignoring the daughter’s criminal past?”

She frowns, and they go about their day, but her eyes linger on him throughout it.

\----

Life goes on. Jane’s own line grows and shrinks.

Red John never joins his line. Jane knows he never will. He will never feel guilt for anything he will do to Red John. Even as his colleagues and friends warn him about the consequences of his hunt, he feels nothing but relief at the knowledge that he will avenge his family.

**Author's Note:**

> Did y'all enjoy? I liked writing it :)


End file.
